lukegilman.com : High on the Hog Blog

Purveyor of Idle Observation

Farhad Manjoo taught me something only marginally related to his post Kill Your RSS Reader: And use my amazing system for browsing the Web, but blessedly useful nonetheless.

My system also makes liberal use of one of the best, least-known shortcuts built into modern Web browsers—the tab-managing powers of the middle mouse button, also known as the mouse wheel. If you think of the wheel only as a tool to scroll with, dear friend, you’re missing out; the middle mouse button does so much more. For example, it’s the best way to open a link in a background tab. Try it: Click and release the middle button on this link and—in most newer browsers—you’ll see Slate’s home page open up in a new tab. You can use the same button to quickly close unwanted tabs, too—click and release the tab you just opened, and voila, it disappears. In Firefox, the middle button has one extra power: Click an empty space in the tab bar and you’ll open up the last tab you closed, which is a godsend if you accidentally sent away something important.

How did I spend this much time on the internet without knowing this?

Interactive guru Renny Gleason presents a taxonomy of inattention in tableaus of us ignoring each other with our mobile devices in this TED Conference talk, Busted. A few of these struck uncomfortably close to home.

• See also: Renny Gleeson’s Blog: ouroboros, dyspeptic rumblings from the guts of interactivity

Common Craft: Saving Money in Plain English

I mentioned CommonCraft in a previous post, noting that they had shifted from promotional videos to educational content. I really like the direction this is taking and wonder how long it will take for teachers to catch on to the power of distributed instructional media in the classroom.

• Make: mind.Depositor custom productivity notebook
• Moleskine: mind.Depositor by Scription
• Flickr: mind.Depositor - how to create a cover for your GTD/Hipster PDA index cards

I was among the many who waited with baited breath for the Blackberry Storm to arrive. Like many diehard Crackberry users, I pined for the familiar buttons of my 8800, which I had grown adept at using with nary a glance. On my new Storm I felt ungainly and awkward as I mistyped even the simplest words and was tortured by the random flip-flopping of the context-oversensitive screen orientation.

But I made peace with the Storm and as I became slightly more adept, though I’m hoping for some UI improvements via software/firmware updates. I’m capturing the best of the tips and tricks I’ve found for the Storm on an ongoing basis to make it easier for others who might otherwise give up on the phone altogether. Visit the Howto page below:

Howto: Master the Blackberry Storm

So I lost my phone this week. Given the lifeline that my crackberry had become, you might think (or at least I would have thought) that this would be a big deal, of weeping and gnashing proportions. Oddly, not so much.

Verizon gave me a loaner crackberry until their shipment of Storms comes in, a now quaintly antiquated 8703. Once I figured out how to work the jog dial, I was up and running in about 20 minutes. I had restored all 500 or so contacts, my calendar and assorted task lists, etc. Only very recently, this recovery would have been a painful and laborious data restoration project. So why wasn’t it a big deal? One word - Google.

This revelation came to me while reading David Carr’s article The Media Equation, Google Seduces With Utility. I’m so used to having Google in my life that my dependence on it doesn’t even occur to me until someone else mentions it. I’ve come to think of Google as a benevolent borg-like overlord. When a new start up comes out that shows promise, I may start including in my nightly prayers that Google buys them up. This typically means the start up I once loved will become instantly free, gradually more stable and able to be integrated into the wider digital ecosystem. The alternative, being bought by Microsoft or Yahoo, generally means they’re about to screw it up. Google’s concessions to its Blogger fiefdom is to my recollection the anomalous and disappointing exception.

My set-up is pretty lo-fi in most respects, but I’ve run into a number of blackberry users who weren’t even aware of the possibilities, so consider this post a public service announcement:

• Download and install Google Mobile for Blackberry; then open Google Apps on your phone and
1. Install Gmail if you use that for personal mail like I do.
2. Install Google Sync and set it up sync your calendar and contacts
• Download and install the Google Talk app from Blackberry

The main advantage is that it weens you off clunky intermediaries such as Microsoft Outlook, which I used to use to keep all my contacts and calendar items synced up. Now I can update it from any computer with an internet connection, which gives me a lot of freedom in managing my schedule. I’ve experimented with other methods/technologies in the past, which have always fallen prey to ease of use (specifically lack thereof) and relying on myself to sync my data when I get busy and the fur starts to fly.

All people are equally good at time management, but some people are more willing than others to admit that they are doing what they want to do, while others maintain the illusion they wish they were doing something else.

A typically insightful observation from Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution: My sentence on time management

Video: Seal a half-eaten bag of Chips with kung-fu folding technique. (via lifehacker)

The ‘Scandinavian Way to Open a bottle of beer,’ though the question of how to open the last beer by this method now perplexes me. via BoingBoing

As recounted in my previous post In search of the perfect laptop I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect laptop (at least for me) before law school starts on May 30. In the previous post I detailed the first step of my buying process - deciding on what I needed, then setting out for the hunt. It occurred to me that detailing the experience would be an interesting project and perhaps provide some guidance for someone considering a next major purchase.

1. List out your requirements

If you’re completely clueless, ask someone tech-savvy to help you. If you live a sad, pitiful, geekless existence, e-mail me and I’ll help you out. Shining happy geeked out people. What else is the internet for anyway? Here’s what I was looking for as outlined in my first post - In search of the perfect laptop

1. Windows XP Pro or Media Center [both run IIS (personal web server), unlike Windows Home; this proved to be a big limitation]
2. Embedded wireless, preferably G
3. 512 MB or more RAM
4. 80 GB plus hard drive
5. CD/DVD Burning
6. built-in memory card reader
7. Approximate Budget: $1000

2. See the thing in person

The first thing I did was set off to the big-box electronics retailer to see these things up close and I’m glad I did. The Gateway that had impressive specs online was considerably underwhelming in person, the ergonomics were terrible and it looked like a throwback from 2000. The Sony was slick, very well put together, but white, which through experience with white things of all types is typically a bad thing past the first month of ownership. The screen quality was also unexpectedly poor and Sony is too in love with their own MemoryStick format to include SD or CompactFlash. The Toshibas were nice, but a bit pricey for the specs, the Acers were alright, though a little sketchy. If there are any Mac-heads out there, sorry but the economics of proprietary hardware mean I’m priced out of that game, though I agree, a far superior product in most respects. The middle ground I found were the HP laptops which had great screens and terrific ergonomics. They appeared very well put together and everything seemed to be located exactly where I would expect it to be. The pricing was generally little higher than what I wanted to pay, but not out of the ballpark.

The other thing I discovered was that I just did not like wide format (17″) laptops. Some I saw had the image skewed horizontally, which I think is just a configuration mistake, but even the ones that looked great seemed awkward. I just like the regular old golden mean 4:3 aspect ratio. The $3,000 laptops we just got at the office have huge, beautiful screens, but the way most websites are designed, they only take up half the screen and introduced resolution issues. Anyway, I don’t like them. Good to know before paying the premium for something that sounds good in theory.

3. WAIT & WATCH

This may be the hardest part, particularly if you just saw the thing in person and really liked it, but it pays dividends. Wandering through I noticed distinct personality differences among the sales cultures at different stores. At Fry’s the sales people circle in chum(p) filled waters with the taste of blood in their noses. If you know what you want and wish to shop in peace you might want to bring a can of mace. Sales people at CompUSA are like rare birds, an elusive sighting can bring a stampede of customers. I made the mistake of wearing a red polo and was asked three times if I worked there, though twice by the same lady. I believe I could stand in front of a laptop for half an hour counting money and never be bothered. Best Buy seem to have had the best-trained and most courteous salespeople. The ones I spoke to seemed knowledgeable and would do a walk-by to see if you needed help but didn’t hover.

None of this matters of course, because I ended up buying online and probably will for almost every tech purchase I make from now on, simply because the web is really good at step #4 -

4. FIND THE DEAL

Computer makers are in an endless cycle of innovation. New better goodies are created every day, which makes last years best and shiniest a little less best and shiny. Since you, if you were selling computers, don’t want to carry inventory on last year’s best and shiniest, yet you still want to get rid of whatever you have left, you typically sell them very cheaply on the web.

While doing research on the Outpost (Fry’s) website, I saw a great deal on the HP dv5030us that matched virtually all of my requirements for $949 less a $50 rebate. Since there was one nearby and the website was going to charge me sales tax anyway, I drove down to Fry’s hoping to pick one up. No such luck. It was a discontinued model. Back to the batcave to order it online. It should arrive Tuesday. Let’s do a comparison just for shits and giggles -

To give you an example of the price difference, CompUSA was selling this same computer at the beginning of April for $1249

I’ll put up some follow-up info when I actually get the laptop and put it through it’s paces.